


Sounds Lonely

by teetertat



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dina-centric, F/F, Post-Canon, Pseudo-Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teetertat/pseuds/teetertat
Summary: The farmhouse cut a lonesome figure, bone-white against the darkening sky, and Ellie would have had just the right words to capture the feeling of this moment.A heavy hand settled on Dina's shoulder.“That’s the last of it.”(In which Ellie returns to Jackson.)
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 253





	1. I've always dreamed of fixing up a farm.

A storm was rolling in on the horizon. The sun vied for position behind grey clouds. The farmhouse cut a lonesome figure, bone-white against the darkening sky, and Ellie would have had just the right words to capture the feeling of this moment.

A heavy hand settled on Dina's shoulder.

“That’s the last of it,” Henry said, brushing his free hand on the front of his overalls. 

Dina turned just enough to catch a glance at him and the cart behind them before fixing her vision forward again, conscious of the tedious heat stinging her eyes. 

“Yeah,” she breathed with a wan smile, rubbing her hand against her face. “I’ll meet you at the fence in a second.”

The pressure on her shoulder lifted and, with a hum of acknowledgement, Jesse’s father began steering the horses to the south. Their shifting weight and the wind whipping through the tall grasses brought with it white noise, ebbing and flowing like the ocean. It was serene, drowning out the wider world, distilling the present moment.

Dina brushed her fingertips against the feathery tops of the grass, absently wondering whether Ellie would have reached the coast by now. It was only a quick mental calculation to know that she hadn’t; even with Ellie at her most dogged, that'd be an impossible pace.

Dina had waited two weeks before giving up the lingering hope that Ellie might turn back, might realize her mistake before making it to Logan, or Pocatello, or whichever fucking direction she had gone. If Ellie was smart, she would have skirted through Idaho and Oregon and followed the coast down, but that would tack on another few weeks’ travel, and she doubted Ellie had the patience. More likely that she would make a beeline through Nevada. Right about now, she was probably close to the border of Utah. If she had even made it that far.

“Fuck.” Dina clenched her jaw with a sharp inhale, bracing her hands on either side of her neck. So much for serene.

The house loomed over her. Once a dream come true after everything they had been through together, it now stood only to mock her naivete. How could she have believed that they could be happy here -- that they could be happy at all? She knew how much pain Ellie was in. Dina had lain awake her all those countless nights, when the haunting of the memories grew too real. It wasn’t easy, but they were moving forward. They were getting better. Had been.

Still, all told, Dina couldn't say she didn’t see it coming. Every minute she had coaxed Ellie through the panic attacks was a minute spent agonizing over whether _this_ would be the one that Ellie couldn’t handle, the one that would send her running, the one that Dina couldn’t fix. But Dina held her anxiety in check because Ellie needed her. And because JJ needed the both of them. 

Dina had never dared think that Ellie would end up choosing the past over their future; not until she saw the backpack on the kitchen floor. Even as much as she wanted to blame Tommy, she knew it was only a matter of time. Ellie had made the choice.

And Dina had made hers. She wasn’t going to sit, and wait, and pray that everything would be okay. Even if Ellie were to come back, there wasn't a chance in hell that things could return to what they once were -- not after turning her back on everything they had built. Dina was moving forward, with or without her. As much as she loved the house, she couldn’t raise JJ out here. Not alone. Not when there was a farm to run, and hunting traps to tend, and infected roaming. So back to Jackson it was.

“We’d best get a move on,” came the voice from behind her, raised over the steady rustling of the field. “Looks like the wind’s picking up.” 

To punctuate his point, a shutter on the near window slammed back with a violent gust. The burst of noise seized Dina’s heart for a fraction of a second. Her eyes jumped to find Ellie, gripped with a sudden and visceral impulse. A heartbeat later, and the moment passed with little more than a rueful sigh and a lingering numbness in her fingertips.

Dina turned, rubbing her hands together as she cut through the field towards where Henry and the cart are waiting at the fence. “Yeah, alright. Robin might be a saint but I’m sure JJ’s got her on the ropes by now.”

Henry chuckled, leading the horses and cart out of the gate at Dina’s invitation. “Are you kidding? That boy’s being spoiled rotten as we speak. I’m more worried about dinner.”

“I know you are,” Dina quipped.

“Oof,” Henry clutched a hand to his heart in mock offense. “Et tu? What _has_ this world come to?”

Dina moved to secure the gate behind them as they passed through. Her lips perched on a wry retort when she was interrupted by an unexpected clink of metal on metal. A simple glance was enough to assess the issue. The locking bar on the gate wasn’t threading through the receiver, instead just catching on the edge of it. Misaligned. Probably a loose hinge. 

"Oh, come on."

Impatient, Dina pulled the bar back once more and slammed it in again with more gusto, to no avail.

With a desperate surge, Dina slammed the lock again. Nothing.

Then again, harder and faster until the metal was reverberating through her arm. Again, until her only thought was of the distant throbbing of pain that lanced up into her shoulder with the sheer exertion of it. Huffing, Dina broke away from the latch and rammed her hands against the links. Unsatisfied with how they dug flimsily against her skin, she reared back again with a shout, this time striking at the wooden fence post with the sole of her boot. The force sent her jolting backwards, arms flailing for balance. She just managed to catch herself on her back heel before Henry rounded the cart.

“Woah, hey! You good?” 

“Yeah, it’s--” Dina started, inexplicably breathless. “Stupid thing won’t--” She gestured at the gate, her hands floundering in the air by way of explanation.

“I’ll get it, alright? You just get settled.” Jesse’s father raised his own palm at her in a placating motion, his other hand coming to rest on the fence. For all her struggling, the gate sagged a little lower.

Dina nodded numbly, unmoving as she watched Henry calmly lift the gate into proper position. After a beat, she shook off… _whatever_ that was, turning to climb onto the front of the cart. Her hands stung, but, looking down, she saw nothing but the likely start of a bruise on her palm. The muscle of her shoulder ached, and she massaged it as Henry finished up and quietly climbed into the seat next to her.

With a tug of the reins, they were on their way. There was a half mile of silence between them before Dina found her voice again.

“Hey, um. I’m sorry. Back there, that was embarrassing.”

Henry was already shaking his head. “Don't even worry about it, kid.” A pause. “I did a lot worse, when they told me Jesse’d… Well, y’know.”

“I bet,” Dina said.

In the distance, thunder rolled.

...

“How’s farm rotation treating you these days?”

Dina straightened, groaning as she hoisted the basket against her hip. “Marginally worse every time you ask.”

Marcus, framed against the door of the greenhouse, answered her grimace with a laugh. “Hey, I’m only the messenger.” He uncrossed his arms and began untying his own dirt-stained apron. “That the last of it?”

“For this row, yeah.” Dina glanced down at the batch of tomatoes fresh from the vine, and the several still left to collect. “The rest will wait til tomorrow.”

The sinking sun cast a pink glow over Jackson, and through the warped glass of the walls, it seemed almost like a dreamscape. A bead of sweat crept down the side of Dina’s face. She wiped at it in a half-exhausted haze, unconcerned with the horrors the humidity inside the greenhouse did to her hair. 

Truth be told, the work was not as bad as Dina made it out to be. It was better than staying home. That is, at JJ’s grandparents’, where she’d been climbing up the wall for the last half of the summer. Maria insisted that it was fine, insisted that Dina should be as present for JJ's formative years as she could be. But with each day that passed, the rooms grew smaller, the air thicker, closing in around her. 

Farm rotation lacked the excitement she’d sought in patrol duty. She missed the wide open spaces and the freedom to do as she pleased as long as the job got done. Inside Jackson’s walls, it seemed now more than ever that there was always someone watching her. She was used to being looked at, but not like this. Not like she was about to break. Fucking Seattle.

Marcus slapped his hands together, the noise muffled by his work gloves but enough to seize Dina’s attention. She stirred from where she stood, carefully picking her way down the aisle of plants towards the doorway while Marcus hoisted a filled crate of his own onto his shoulder. 

Together they stepped out into the open air, the red sky quickly darkening as Dina closed the door behind them. 

“You want help with that?” Marcus nodded towards Dina’s basket as she turned back around to join him.

“I've got it.” Dina protectively shifted her body to shield the basket from him, brow cocked in warning but betrayed by the wry quirk of her cheek.

“Alright.” He lifted his free hand in surrender, voice arching playfully. “Don’t take this the wrong way now, but you just look kind of tired.”

“Thank you so much.”

“One might say haggard, even.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Dina scoffed but couldn’t hide the smile in her voice.

Marcus shot her a sidelong grin of his own, teeth bright against his skin. “I told you not to take it the wrong way.”

Dina knew what he was trying to do -- he’d been trying it for a while now, not that Dina could fault him. He was a nice guy, who deserved a nice gal. He made her smile, never pushed his luck. If she were to tell him to back off, he would. There wasn’t anything there for her to give. Every time she tried to move forward, she felt as if she were being dragged right back. Back to the farmhouse. Back to the sound of the screen door slamming. As much as she hated it, there was no letting go of the hope that she would hear it open again.

They kept walking, and Marcus was speaking again -- "So the church's putting on a bonfire next week --"

He was cut thankfully short by a brief, shrill whistle from down the road. Along Main Street, the hum of conversation died as people turned their attention to the front gate of the town. It lasted for only the briefest of moments before the townsfolk lost interest and returned to their goings-on. 

“Traders?” Dina ventured, casting a wary eye at the sunset as they turned the corner towards the storage house. It certainly couldn’t be patrols -- they would have returned by now.

Marcus grinned. “I hope it’s the folks from out Buffalo way. That whiskey they’ve got is really something else.”

Dina hummed absently, and Marcus kept talking, his words fading to the background as she tried to catch glimpses of the front gate between buildings. She could see one of the guardsmen on the wall gesticulating impatiently at the men below him as they worked to get the gate open. One of the others, rifle slung over his shoulder, was walking hurriedly further into town as if on some mission. Numbness buzzed at the tips of Dina’s fingers at the mere possibility. It was not what she hoped it was. She knew as much. But...

“How’s JJ doing?” 

Marcus’s voice was pointed, cutting through to her attention. Dina blinked rapidly, almost disoriented, her head jerking back towards him. She saw Marcus glance past her, following the line of her sight. There was a knowing look on his face. Mercifully, he elected not to acknowledge it. 

“He’s good.” The words came out strangled. Dina cleared her throat. “Actually, he learned a new word the other day.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah." Dina breathed a laugh, a simpering smirk finding its way to her lips. “ _Mine_. He’s been having a lot of fun with that one.”

Ten minutes later, they finished up at the produce shed. Marcus waved as they parted ways, and Dina wound her way back through the streets, rubbing her hands together to fend off the night chill. The lights strung up along main street cast a warm glow on the faces of those she passed by, offering nods and greetings as they went. Some carried on conversations on their porches. One long-bearded neighbor trilled a melody on his harmonica, a hound dog curled up at his feet. Most of the nighttime noise was coming from Seth’s, where people began to congregate to wind down. Or wind up, depending on the mood. Not too long ago, Dina would have been among them.

Now, she made for Henry and Robin's. Their house was among several near-identical ones lining the street, two-story suburban dreams that were probably prime real estate once upon a time. The lights were on, and Dina could hear the soft chatter from within. As she came to the front porch, she lifted her head to acknowledge the town’s proprietor, who approached from the opposite direction.

“Maria,” Dina nodded politely, turning her attention quickly to the front door as she ascended the porch stairs.

“Hey Dina.” The older woman’s voice was not a greeting, but a hail, stopping Dina in her tracks. “I was actually looking for you.”

“Oh?” Dina turned, brow raised. Around them, the street was empty and quiet save for the symphony of the night time critters emerging.

The moon cast a ghostly pallor on Maria’s face. “I thought I should tell you.”

The buzzing Dina hears has nothing to do with the crickets in the air. Before the words have even finished forming upon Maria’s lip, Dina knows. 

“Ellie’s back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why wait for a DLC when you can write fanfiction instead? 
> 
> This is my attempt at a character study. I've planned this as three chapters, which could be more depending on how the plot shapes up! Please let me know what you think so we can scream about the end of the game together.
> 
> No beta, we die like fools.


	2. Why wouldn't you stay in town?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dina makes a decision.

“Aren’t you worried he’ll get the wrong message?” 

Dina sat at the dining room table, the ghost of a smile upon her lips. Morning light streamed across the scrap components of the disassembled mobile radio in front of her. She spared a moment’s glance from the wiring she was carefully folding into place, into the living room, where the folksy tones of Johnny Cash were easing from the record player.

From the worn couch, Henry laughed. “Nah, it’s his favorite song,” he said, even as the singer waxed poetic about killing his old man. Johnny Cash suddenly raised his voice, and JJ let out a babble, his little arms wagging as if in agreement. The skeptical twist in Dina’s smile merged into something softer at the sight of the two of them, JJ bouncing up and down between his grandfather’s calloused hands, off-beat and not knowing it.

Outside, the world was cast in silver. Clouds stretched from one mountain peak to the other, a dome across the sky, ever-present without being overbearing. Mist had begun to fall.

Living in Jackson might as well have been living inside a snow globe. The evergreen trees were unconcerned with the shifting of seasons, preserved as they ever were, hiding away this pocket of warmth and light until the world outside seemed little more than a fairy tale told to keep children from wandering too far into the darkness. A shift in the breeze, the first snow, the longer nights, all happened so gradually, almost imperceptibly, as if the passage of time itself was little more than an afterthought.

Then the earth would shake.

...

“Ellie’s back.” Maria’s voice was low. Almost a warning. Almost like she was speaking to a wild animal.

The porch railing bit hard into Dina’s palm. She gripped it as if it were the only real thing left, as if by its very existence she could be assured of the reality of the moment. The wood edges dug into her skin, and the words cut through the white noise rushing in her ears which might have otherwise convinced Dina that she’d heard wrong.

She was silent, jaw working, certain there was something she was supposed to say. Dina was not one to overthink, but this very moment had crossed her mind so many times, unwanted but enduring like a splinter. She was sure she had decided how she would feel, what she would do, if. Had she not searched a little too thoroughly each time she stepped outside the walls, watched a little too intensely every time the gates opened? Now all the different words she had once imagined herself saying, all the possibilities, all the questions formed a chorus in her mind.

Dina’s gaze flitted past Maria, down the street, toward the center of town.

“How is she?” she asked at length, pleased with how controlled her voice sounded.

“She’s in one piece. I set her up in Joel’s old garage. She said that was fine, so…” Maria hesitated, swiped her hands along her jeans before stepping forward. “I know you two have still got stuff to work out, if you wanted to take tomorrow --”

“ _Maria_.” A huff escaped Dina’s lips, a single, mirthless laugh begging to be believed. “I’m over it, alright?”

Maria looked unconvinced. Dina inhaled deeply, and wondered at how difficult it was to breathe. 

“Look.” Her tone wavered for a second, and Dina clenched her jaw, wrestling back control. “If Ellie wants to be here, good for her. Really. But I don’t have anything to say that she hasn’t already heard.”

Maria regarded her for a wordless moment, frowning. Her eyes trailed down from Dina’s face to her rapidly whitening knuckles. 

“Alright.” Maria inclined her head. To her credit, she knew which battles were worth picking. “You know I just want everyone to be on the same page.”

Something ugly and sharp rose in Dina. The words were out before she could bite down on them. “Just like you and Tommy, huh?”

Maria looked for a moment as if she’d been slapped, the shock and indignation combining in a way that was satisfying for only a heartbeat before realization dawned on Dina. She didn’t know why she said it. She didn’t know why the feeling in her fingers had vanished.

Maria’s face hardened.

“Good night, Dina.”

Maria walked away, and Dina watched her, wanting to call out, wishing she could apologize. But the pressure in her chest simply wouldn’t allow it. Slowly, Dina extracted her trembling hands from the rail. 

As she turned to face the house, the world kept spinning for a moment too long. Dina caught herself heavily on the door knob, holding herself there. She forced herself to breathe, forced her ribs open, quaking with the effort.

“Dina! Can you bring in the…” 

Dina registered Robin's voice before she saw her, sitting at the dinner table. The door knob weighed heavily in her fingers as she hovered in the doorway, the night at her back. JJ, in his high chair, was studiously examining a salt shaker, while his grandmother tried ever so gently to negotiate him out of making a mess. Henry was setting the table with his back to the door, a large stock pot cooling on the counter just beyond him. The picture of domesticity. Dina felt, suddenly and violently, like a stranger.

Robin trailed off, having looked up. Her face contorted with an emotion Dina couldn’t place. “Are you alright?”

Henry crooked his neck at the concern in his wife’s voice.

What must she look like to prompt such a question, Dina wondered. The door closed solidly behind her. She kept one hand on it all the way, feeling as if she were gliding on the floor, legs moving almost on their own accord.

“Yeah, I just -- I’m going to lie down for a minute.” Dina gestured vaguely towards the stairs. “Long day.”

...

“You feeling okay?” 

A plate of scrambled eggs scraped briefly along the table, and when Dina looked up she was greeted with the softly smiling face of Robin. The woman’s greying hair was thrown up in a faded blue bandanna that seemed to perfectly complement the pale light.

“Oh, yeah.” Dina waved a dismissive hand which felt not nearly as casual as she willed it to be. Robin's gaze -- wide, alert, and radiating concern -- was searching Dina’s so intensely that she found she could not stand to keep it. Almost immediately, she was turning back to the machine in front of her. She twisted a small set of pliers, probing too intently on the delicate mechanical guts. “I’m sorry I missed dinner last night.”

Robin tutted softly before settling into the adjacent chair. “You look a bit tired is all.”

The sound of wood scraping on wood set Dina’s teeth on edge. A laugh rose unbidden from between them. “You know, I’ve been getting that a lot.”

Robin looked decidedly unamused, her lips a thin, pitying line. She pushed a fork closer to Dina, and it rasped on the table. “I worry that you’re working yourself too hard sometimes. You know no one would bat an eye if you took some time for yourself every now and again.”

She was seeking an explanation of sorts, perhaps. An admission, or a plea for help. Dina had none she was willing to offer, no guiltless lie she could hide behind and no will to speak the truth under the reality of the morning light. It wouldn’t change anything, to know how Dina had feigned sleep while they laid JJ to rest, or how she had laid awake long after the streets below had gone empty and still. She’d waited in the darkness; for what, she didn’t dare think. But she knew she did not want to risk missing it.

Dina had held her breath against the silent judgement of the moonlight, straining to hear anything beyond the eerie songs of creatures unseen in the darkness. Who could blame her, if she spent one hour watching out the window, knowing that somewhere just out of sight, a ghost slept among them. Who could blame her for the hour she spent bent forward on the edge of the couch, hands pressed tight against her mouth to stop them shaking, to keep her breath from escaping and tearing through the night. Who could blame her for memorizing the grain pattern on the front door, or for the five times she pulled on her jacket only to shed it again, her fingers hovering over the doorknob, knowing what would happen if she dared touch it.

Ellie’s back. The words had echoed across her mind until they lost their meaning altogether. It would be a short walk in crisp night air, just around the corner. But every time she reached for the door, she was struck with the violence of a memory: the hard, unrecognizable, look on Ellie’s face in the early light. The moment Dina realized that she had already lost her. The ease with which Ellie had walked away had ripped an angry, bleeding wound in her. Dina thought she’d been healing. As it turned out, she had simply learned to live with the damage.

Robin didn’t need to know any of that.

“Listen, honey,” Robin, met with Dina’s silence, placed a comforting hand on her wrist. Dina tensed at the contact. “Your face when you came home last night scared me half to death. If something happened…”

Dina looked up sharply, feeling her pulse begin to quicken. Heat was rising to her face, a wash of emotion she could not contain, the prospect of making real the knowledge that she had kept secreted away in the night. If she spoke it, she would have to face it. It meant that Ellie was in Jackson.

“Ellie came back.” 

The air already felt as if it were being sucked from her lungs before she managed to finish speaking. Dina pressed a hand against her mouth, fearing that if she moved she would surely break, and every ounce of rage she had kept so carefully tucked away would spill forth. It was in her skin already, her free fist tensing and releasing, tendons wound tight and ready to snap. She had made it real. Ellie was in Jackson, and she wasn’t looking for Dina.

“Oh. Oh!” Robin's face of concern morphed very suddenly, first into a mask of surprise, tinged with the colors of joy. It twisted back into worry at what she saw in Dina’s eyes. “Oh, honey. Do you think --”

“I don’t know,” Dina said quickly. She leaned back in her chair, pulling her hands into her lap under the table, ignoring how they trembled there. Whatever it was, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. “I don’t feel like talking about it right now.”

Robin blinked, withdrawing. “Okay.”

There was a beat of silence, before the music from the living room moved to fill it. I know you hate me, and you got the right, said Johnny Cash.

“I mean, if she wants to talk, that’s up to her.” Dina continued in spite of herself, the insistence springing forth. “Because I’m done with it.”

“I know, honey.”

She resented the way Robin said it, altogether too gentle and too accommodating. Dina could hear the hollowness in her own words, scarcely convincing even to her own ears. _I’m done with it_ , she had told herself for so long, she had almost been able to get away with believing it. But then, the fact she had to say it at all belied the inescapable truth. Dina clenched her jaw, picking up the pliers again to needle at the innards of the radio.

Soft metallic _tink tink tink_ -ing punctuated the space between them.

There was no goal to her motions but the mindless preoccupation of it. If wires got crossed and delicate copper pieces ended up in the wrong place, what difference would it make? The thing was broken to begin with. She was fooling herself if she thought she could fix it.

The song came to a close with the singer shouting out above the audience, a comedic moment that had JJ squealing in a fit of amusement from across the room, as if he had any idea what it meant.

Her hands stilled as she watched him, watched the pure and unabashed joy spring across his face in the most infectious way. The warmth Dina felt spreading so slowly through her did not feel so different from the searing pain that occupied the same space in her chest. A single thought, ringing out from the recesses of that same wound, fluttered across her mind. _How could she?_ It said. _How_ dare _she?_

 _Fuck it_ , Dina thought.

The chair scraped backwards with such force and swiftness that Robin nearly leapt back. The pliers clattered across the table, and Dina had already shrugged into her jacket before Robin managed to ask: “Where are you going?”

Dina paused, her fingers a mere inch from the door. Outside, she could see the faintest flecks of rain gently swirling in the breeze beyond. To the right of the door hung the hamsa, the very one she had brought back from the farm. How many silent prayers had she offered up in its presence? She looked at it now, and a single-minded stillness settled upon her, every emotion within her coalescing to a single point, teetering on the tip of a knife.

“To get answers.”

The drizzling mist clung to Dina’s skin like so many beads of glass as she approached. Her fist was clenched tightly against her side, so tight she felt the pulse in her fingers radiating up into her arm. She leveled her eyes at the door.

She listened, breath caught in her chest lest she miss the barest sound. A rusted wheelbarrow eked along the road beyond, its driver’s keys jangling in their pocket to mark each step. Someone whistled a familiar song, slightly out of tune, and indistinguishable conversations emerged from the eaves of buildings. Two birds were engaged in a call-and-response. A dog barked, and they fled, raising their alarm. All around her stirred the morning in Jackson.

The garage, however, betrayed no such signs of life. If they were to be found, they went unnoticed, hidden well beneath its facade. Its windows and blinds, smartly closed, offered nothing.

The garage stood just as it had for as long as Dina knew it, since before she had ever laid eyes on the waifish girl with eyes like fire and the man who was not her father but guarded her better than one. It stayed just out of sight behind rows of fences and tucked behind now-empty homes. The path to it was worn like a scar in the earth.

Dina raised her fist. It hovered inches from the door, poised like a tribute. She paused for one breath. Two. Three breaths, and she struck the wood. Three solid raps -- not with the knuckles, but like a hammer. Or a gavel. 

She did not count the seconds that passed.

The floor groaned.

The lock twisted.

The door opened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to caitsyoi for being a sounding board about this whole game, and helping to proof this chapter.
> 
> Huge thanks to everyone who left feedback or support on the first chapter! I am absolutely obsessed with Dina and Ellie and would love to keep exploring their relationship both pre- and post- canon. I'd love to hear your thoughts.


End file.
